


you look different by morning's light

by guanoo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Denial, Episode: s11e12 Don't You Forget About Me, F/F, Loss of Virginity, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:00:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7479804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guanoo/pseuds/guanoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Coda to <span class="u">11.12</span>]</p><p>The tenuous peace between them lasts an entire month this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you look different by morning's light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodandcream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/gifts).



> 1\. Set about a month after 11x12 -- spoilers for that episode  
> 2\. In my head Alex is 17 and Claire, 19 -- don't actually know how old they are in canon  
> 3. I'm not great at characterization and I've never written these two before. Observations/constructive criticism appreciated  
> 4\. [and this, mostly for myself] named after A Certain Slant [though i already have a fic named slant, probably for the same reason can't remember... there are two books called A Certain Slant of Light, the first one I read I can barely remember, except it involved some pregnant Jehova's witnesses chick and it literally altered the way i thought about the universe when i was in middle school. I tried to find it again but I only found the other book which is about sexually questionable ghost possession. Titillating, but not awe-inspiring]:
> 
> For bloodandcream... Darling you are my queen. I love your brain and your writing and yeah I hope you like this :)

The tenuous peace between them lasts an entire month this time. Claire stops clogging the shower drain with her blonde knots; Alex stops stealing Claire's lipstick. Though really, Claire should give it to her, since she never wears it herself.

She thinks about it—thinks it might be nice. Then again, it would be a Gesture, and things are awkward enough already.

 

Alex is a punctual person, but she overslept this morning, maybe because Claire fucked with the circuit breaker last night— _what? She has to learn how those things work if she’s going to be a hunter_ —and Alex’s alarm clock probably got reset. Oops.

Claire cracked her eyes open at the sound of Alex pelting down the hallway, shouting something about no tampons ( _which, okay, maybe Claire used the last of them, but the female body is a freaky thing, and with three women in the house… yeah, there’s a monthly crush for supplies_ ). Not ten minutes later, Alex rushed back in the other direction, knocking over something heavy that fell to the floor with a metallic clang ( _ooh shit, Claire forgot to hide the angel blade she’d nicked off the giant Winchester… What? Jody “confiscated” her last one!_ ). Alex cried out in frustration, her shadow stooping outside Claire’s bedroom door to examine the fallen object.

“Dammit, Claire,” she breathed, her voice carrying that harsh, despairing undertone which meant she was stressed, working herself up to a crying jag in some dark corner.

And Claire didn’t feel tired anymore.

She waited until Alex had sniffled and sworn her way out of earshot before raking fingers through her hair and tipetoing into the hall. It was barely morning. The kitchen lay empty, crisscrossed by the kind of harsh, chilly winter sunlight that made Claire shiver with loneliness. On the table lay two twenty-dollar bills—lunch money for each of them for this week. Claire took hers and wadded it into her pocket, then took a swig from the coffee sitting on the counter. Still hot, which meant it was Alex’s, not Jody’s. Jody leaves even earlier than Alex does.

She felt, rather than heard, Alex’s approach behind her. She turned, leaning back against the sink and preparing herself for the inevitable berating.

But Alex stood there limply, eyes huge and clear, beautiful in spite of their red rims. ( _She’s always pretty; she’s never happy; as though her encounters with the supernatural have left her... altered, somehow_.) She opened her mouth a couple of times in indecision, then settled for “Hey.”

“Hey,” Claire returned. “Look, I’m sorry about the—”

“Forget it.” Alex crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Claire’s bare knees. “I’m late. Can I get to the—”

“Yeah."

She watched Alex pack her lunch with another pang of guilt—she knows finances are tough lately, with Jody’s medical bills and Alex’s shrink, and yet Jody gives them lunch money every week, which Claire spends on ammo. But Alex folds hers under the flour jar with the rest of Jody’s emergency bills.

Her fingers worked quickly and precisely, making two PB&J sandwiches and cutting the crusts off one.

Claire blinked.

Honestly, she’s not a morning person. She stays up late doing research, and anyway monster attacks are statistically less likely to occur between the hours of 7am and noon. When she stumbles out of bed around lunchtime to an empty house and finds a crustless PB&J just waiting for her on a plate in the fridge—yeah, she thinks it’s Jody’s incessant mothering.

Turns out she was wrong.

As she watched, Alex slid the sandwich onto a plate and turned to put it in the fridge, then froze, seeing Claire’s eyes. “Jody forgot,” she lied, then hustled out of the room.

Claire gritted her teeth. Honestly, it’s awkward as shit, now that her and Alex are being nice to one another. And because she maybe cares a little, Claire has no right to say _anything_.

But the sandwich-making has to stop.

She stumbled back down the hallway, feigning sleepiness and trudging right into Alex. The collision was intentional—Claire knew she was being a dick—but it didn’t hurt any less when Alex jerked away like she’d been burned.

“’M _late_ ,” she muttered, and Claire caught that wounded undertone again.

Despite the steel in Alex's blood, sometimes Claire thinks she might snap in half.

That was how Claire found herself standing barefoot in the morning dew, holding the door open for her foster sister. Alex blinked at her, hands full with backpack and hastily packed lunch and textbook and soccer ball.

Claire. Holding the door. Talk about awkward.

Alex hissed something under her breath.

"Yeah, I didn't catch that."

“Move,” Alex said, louder.

Claire sidestepped. “Just trying to be nice.” She felt a hot pinprick of anger. Her own behavior was confusing enough without Alex’s fucking sensitive responses.

Alex turned to look up at her, all pale skin and dark hair and doll-pretty sorrow, green eyes grey and teary in the morning light. “Well… can you just _not_?” she asked brokenly.

“Back at you,” Claire mumbled belatedly as Alex’s bike rushed down the street, out of sight.

 

Now she’s got the entire day to start feeling pissed.

First off, she isn’t actually working yet, since she has so many assault charges—Jody has to pull some heavy strings before Claire can even _think_ of interning at the sheriff’s office.

Second, she missed the boat on college—the registrar gave her a flat “No” and fucking academic suspension, like that was any sort of punishment.

Claire’s not too broken up about the whole college deal. Bunch of erudite spooks if you ask her. Dean had laughed when she muttered that under her breath, cutting mocking eyes at his brother.

And there’s her third reason.

Dean’s gone. She may have nursed a tiny— _okay, huge and throbbing and disgusting, and what do you call a guy like him anyway? DILF?—_ crush on the older hunter over the past year. But so what? He’s straightforward, and looks in her eyes when he talks to her. Isn’t scared of touching her, either.

Anyway, the dude’s easy on the eyes, even if he’s kind of a grandpa.

And yet since his last visit she feels a tiny crumpling that says he’s human. Something about the way his eyes go all soft over home-cooked meals. People get misty-eyed over the weirdest shit.

Anyway, he’s not the person she sees in her erotic daydreams anymore. Problem is, there’s _someone_ there: someone raw, and it hurts because Claire can’t seem to get a good look at his face.

She’s starting to suspect she’s deliberately closing her eyes.

The fourth and most important reason for her frustration is that she’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t exactly a hunter yet. Of course she has skills: once the shock from Alex almost getting her throat ripped out during Claire’s latest— _and last_ —case wore off, Claire realized she was a natural-born hunter. She also realized there were more noble reasons for hunting than simply boredom, burning time.

Alex proved that to her. When Claire's lying awake in the early hours of the morning, trying to drift off, she sees Alex.

Sees her flinching at needles and staying in on Halloween.

Sees her working her ass off in school.

Sees _her_ , the day Claire borrowed Jody’s truck to pick Alex up from soccer practice. Sees Roy Jennings ( _all-varsity all-tousled-blonde all-douche_ ) with his tongue down Alex’s throat. Feels the grip of rage somewhere low, like when she realized Alex was still a virgin and that sociopathic vamp almost popped her cherry, like Alex might be moving on a little too fast. “Recovery” and all. ( _Shrinks peddle a load of shit… what else is new._ )

Sees Alex jerk back when Roy Jennings nips sensually at her neck. (Sees her own feet hit the pavement.)

Sees the splash of blood from his nose. (Alex beat her to the punch.)

Sees Alex offering herself to a new nest of vamps because she thinks it’ll save Jody and Claire.

 

Claire thought she was hard like old leather and rusted nails and early January. Thought family was some kind of soft underbelly that hunters avoided _(or, you know, entered the profession without_ ).

And it is, but she isn’t.

If Alex is willing to make that kind of sacrifice, someone should be there to make sure she doesn’t have to. Someone strong.

So Claire reels herself in and gets to work. She may be playing a waiting game, but in the meanwhile, who’s going to train her?

Anyhow, she may have accidentally erased Dean’s number from her phone when she realized he wasn’t The One.

 

Three dusty volumes and thirty rounds later, Claire’s examining a bullet-ridden stop sign in the twilight woods of Sioux Falls.

Her aim’s improving.

 

When she runs, there’s nothing on her mind. She knows the land, knows her feet, and her mind just flies far away.

Only not so far because she’s thinking of the sandwich she didn’t eat for lunch and how she’s never going to eat fucking PB&J ever again.

See if Alex does shit like that now.

 

Alex is in the shower when she gets back. Jody’s cooking dinner.

Claire bangs on the bathroom door.

“Leave her alone, Claire,” Jody calls from the kitchen. Claire rolls her eyes and pops the bathroom door open quietly. Once the door snicks safely shut behind her, she makes a bunch of noise, letting Alex know she’s in there. Alex doesn’t say anything.

She plops down on the edge of the sink, grazing the shower curtain with her fingers. “Hey, Al…”

Nothing.

“Alex?”

Silence.

“ _Alex_ ,” she hisses, edge of alarm in her throat.

“Fuck off.”

The alarm eases. “Good to know you’re alive,” she says flatly.

“What do you want.”

“I’m waiting for the shower, genius.” Claire jiggles her knee when Alex doesn’t respond, then adds in monotone, “News flash: you take forever.”

After a moment, Alex says, “Do not,” and there’s another note in her voice— _if Claire didn’t know better, she’d think it was something like fondness—_ and whatever it is, Claire doesn’t really know how to deal with it, but she knows she _has_ to, and soon, so she stays, listening to the splash of water, click of a conditioner bottle.

She thinks she might harass Alex a little, just to get the conversation rolling.

“So how's Roy?”

“Shut up.”

Claire scoffs. “Excuse me?” She's the last person to care about someone’s manners, but after a month of playing nice she’s caught off guard by the sudden shift. Her mouth gapes open and she can’t even think of a fucking retort, Christ.

In a breath, the tap squeaks off and the shower curtain’s drawn back, rings clattering on their pole. Alex stands there dripping and naked and hiding a little behind her long wet hair. But there is no hesitation in her voice, it rings bright and cold like the steel in Alex’s blood: “I said shut up.”

Claire snaps a towel off the bar and throws it at her. “You joining a nudist colony or something? Fuck!”

Alex catches the towel and wraps it around her (pretty) curves, clear eyes regarding Claire briefly before flicking away.

And now Claire’s really mad at Alex, for her chilly nonchalance when Claire’s heart is pounding in her ears. “God, warn a person next time!” she snaps, because Alex doesn’t get to make fucking sandwiches and responsible decisions and then just flash her tits at random. “It’s fucking nasty! Feel like I’ve gotta scratch my eyes out,” she sneers, turning her face away.

A sharp rap on the door makes both of them jump. “Claire! What did I tell you!”

Jody sounds _pissed._

Claire springs to her feet—getting ready to haul ass out of there in case Jody and Alex decide to team up against her. Or something. She glances instinctively at Alex, whose eyes have gone moonlight-wide. Their gazes meet, and Alex looks vulnerable, strangely wounded despite her metal forgings. Then it’s gone again, and Claire’s left in the dark.

“Jody it’s fine,” Alex calls, steady. “She isn’t bothering me.”

Claire stares.

“We’re um. Can you leave us alone for a minute?”

“Oh,” Jody’s voice softens through the door, then it grows meaningful in a way that Claire finds immensely irritating: “ _Oh_. Well then! Dinner’s ready in 10!” she says, a mite too cheerful, and clears out.

Which leaves Claire and Alex standing half a foot apart, wedged into each other’s space by the narrowness of the bathroom.

“God, what is _up_ with you?” Claire whispers, and it’s the first time in her life she’s genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question.

Alex’s eyes spark again—definitely pain, but it’s weird timing—then she bows her head, hiding her eyes behind long black hair.

"You're fucking oblivious," she says, voice quiet but damning. 

Claire doesn’t know what the fuck is happening so she decides to force the issue.

"So what, we live through one ugly massacre, and now you want to be friends? And I'm supposed to—what, believe that?" she demands, heart drumming wildly, head a mess with Alex defending her but keeping her at arm's length all the same.

Alex scoffs. “I’m surprised it lasted this long.”

“Same here,” Claire throws back. Then, coloring her tone with dragging indifference to disguise the lump in her throat, “Since you hate me and all.”

Alex whirls on her, and she’s surprised to find tears in her eyes. “I have _never_ hated you,” she says through her teeth, then wrenches the out of the tiny room and rushes down the hall to her bedroom, slamming the door.

Claire’s left staring down an empty hallway, wondering what the fuck just happened.

 


End file.
